JAZZ REVIEW PROGRAM MAKES NATIONAL DEBUT IN JANUARY
Listen Here! features journalists and radio hosts Neil Tesser and Mark Ruffin
CHICAGO -- Radio stations throughout North America and the Caribbean will be carrying a new weekly jazz radio program beginning in January, 2005. Dubbed Listen Here!, the show will be hosted by Chicago-based jazz journalists and radio hosts Neil Tesser and Mark Ruffin, and distributed by WFMT Radio Network.
The program will air in a two-hour format incorporating conversation, criticism, debate, recorded music, interviews, and occasional live performances from jazz venues around North America.
With a tip of the hat to Ebert and Roeper, Tesser and Ruffin will review the newest jazz recordings, analyzing and playing the best of the best and often agreeing to disagree. Each week’s program will also include an interview with at least one prominent jazz artist, discussing his or her latest recording. Selected programs will feature guest jazz critics with their own perspectives on what’s new in jazz.
And Listen Here! will be on the road in 2005, recording live on stage at some of the best-known jazz clubs and settings in the U.S. and Canada, in front of a live audience.
Neil Tesser is the author of The Playboy Guide to Jazz, jazz critic for the Chicago Reader, and the former jazz critic for Playboy Magazine. Author of liner notes for more than 150 albums – one of which, the Stan Getz reissue, The Girl from Ipanema, received a Grammy nomination – Tesser previously hosted Jazz Forum on Chicago Public Radio His broadcast credits include arts commentaries for the NPR series Future Forward and for all-news WBBM-AM, and he was the initial jazz critic for USA Today. He recently completed his second term as president of the Chicago chapter of the National Academy of
m o r e
Recording Arts & Sciences. He has won a Deems Taylor Award from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) in the category of liner notes.
Tesser has been hosting Miles Ahead, Chicago’s only evening drive-time jazz radio program, since 2001, and in national syndication since 2003.
Mark Ruffin is an Emmy Award-winning jazz correspondent for Artbeat Chicago on Chicago’s PBS outlet, WTTW-TV, jazz editor for Chicago Magazine, music editor for the alternative weekly N'Digo, and a producer of jazz recordings and events. He, too, is a former jazz host on Chicago Public Radio, and hosted programs on a number of other Chicago radio stations. For five years, he was the producer of the nationally syndicated Ramsey Lewis radio program.
Ruffin is a former musician and songwriter who has written over five hundred articles on jazz, broadcasting and African-American culture. His work has appeared in a variety of local and national publications, including the Chicago Sun-Times, Down Beat, Jazziz, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Playboy, and dozens of other publications. He’s been a regular host on the Chicago edition of Miles Ahead since 2003, and recently joined Neil Tesser as co-host of the syndicated edition of Miles Ahead.
WFMT Radio Network was created to distribute the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Lyric Opera of Chicago. Today, the Network serves hundreds of stations worldwide with performance concerts of major symphony orchestras in North America and Europe, grand opera from Chicago and Germany, concerts from the very best in jazz, exclusive programming from Deutsche Welle Radio and the BBC, musical retrospectives, folk music, specials and unique American and European music and documentary programs.
WFMT Radio Network programs have won every major honor in broadcasting. These include the Prix Italia, George Foster Peabody Award, Major Armstrong Awards, Ohio State Awards and awards from International Radio Festival of New York. Nearly 1,200 broadcast outlets in the United States (including cable systems and worldwide Internet streams) carry programming from the WFMT Radio Network, as do radio services in other countries.
Listen Here! is getting a running start thanks to generous underwriting support from International Truck and Engine Corporation. International delivers high performance trucks and engines that meet customer needs – and society’s need for clean air. For more information about International and the new generation of green diesel technology vehicles, log onto
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